The importance of creative dance within Scottish schools’ curriculum is a subject that all teachers should consider. According to Cone (2009), creative dance leaves vision to the young people and reflects their own ideas.
Dance should be meaningful, fun, safe and child led. Teachers should allow children to take their creative ideas and turn it into a dance themselves. This is where the child will have the most powerful learning experience. The lecture has shown me that you do not have to be an expert in dance to teach it. Putting the children into the role of the teacher is an excellent way to get the children to improve self-confidence, physical and mental well-being.
Workshops allowed us to improve confidence in ourselves and strive for the pupils of our future classrooms to feel confidence too.
The dance workshop allowed us to compile our dance experience in to a final dance that we will video next week. As it is coming up to Christmas, we decided to use this theme as a stimulus to come up with our own dance moves. We were split into 5 groups where each had a task to teach a lesson about dance. My group had the priority of teaching the class Christmas dance moves using the 10-basic dance moves we learned previously. For example, we used the balance dance move to make out body into the shape of a Christmas tree. This was successful teaching because we used a variation of makes that were related to Christmas. We then compiled all of our ideas in to a full dance, using moves such as Mexican waves and turns. This workshop was a fun exercise that children can use to be creative and improve their confidence and self-esteem.
The drama workshop allowed to create a micro-teaching task with a story theme. My group chose the Gruffallo because it is a book that is very popular and many children and adults are familiar with. My group based this task on early level schooling. We focused on teaching the three drama conventions: Voice in the head, Mime and Hot seating and showed short video clips of the Gruffallo story so that the students understood the story. My particular task was to explain to the other students that they were to Hot seat the Gruffallo and the mouse. Overall, the micro-teaching tasks and we got good feedback, such as positive assertiveness and good use of video of the Gruffallo.
Reflecting on this week’s lectures and workshops, I have found that my confidence in teacher has soared since partaking in this module. I have had many opportunities to teach others regularly which has improved my relationship with others in the class. I have also found that it is essential to have positive teaching styles when teaching a class so that everyone is engaged and enjoying the lesson.
References:
Cone, T.P. (2009) Following their lead: Supporting children’s ideas for creating dances. Journal of Dance Education, Vol 9(3), pp.81-89.
